Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a little girl who loved to bowl.  Yes bowl.  And it wasn’t really in a land far far away, but right here in my home town at Tenpin Lanes.  I spent the first almost 50 years of my life in a bowling alley.  My dad ran the bowling alley in our town so I spent almost every day there.  He would take me to work with him for a few hours when I was little and he would just put me on a lane with a ball and I would entertain myself for quite a while.  When I got into elementary school, we actually had a school bowling league.  The bowling bus would pick us up at Charles Evans Elementary every Monday after school and take about 30 of us to Tenpin Lanes and we would have a great time.  I still remember my first bowling ball, it was all of nine pounds, was black and had a red ace on it.  Wooohooo.  Over the next few years I honed in on my sport and my new 10 pound ball was purple.  That was after all Donnie Osmond’s favorite color.  Quickly I moved to an 11 pound coral colored ball and then on to a gold glittery 12 pound ball.  Hey, I’ve always liked color and sparkle.

My next move was to learn the correct approach and develop an actual bowling style.  No more running up to the foul line and throwing the ball as hard as I could with a back handed spin.  It was time for a four-step approach and a finger-tip ball.  Made all the difference in the world.  Now I’m a contender.  I told myself that someday I would be on TV as a professional woman bowler and maybe I could have.

All through junior high, high school and college I competed.  I loved it.  It was my absolute passion.  One of my best friends was also as crazy about bowling as I was and we bowled together every day and went to tournaments together.  For a short while we even bowled together in college before I changed schools.  I ended my collegiate career at Oklahoma State University as a bowling Cowgirl.  It was awesome.  She went on to compete as a professional woman bowler appearing on national television.  I have always been so proud of her.

I decided in college that I would rather get married and be a mom than travel the country working to make a living on the women’s professional bowling tour.  I would like to think that I could have made it, but who knows.  I continued to bowl league in the cities I lived in and when the kids and I moved back to Oklahoma, I joined a league with some girlfriends and we even went to our state tournaments.  It was enjoyable and I had a good time.

Not long after the kids and I moved back to my home town in 1991, the owners of my home town bowling alley, the people who employed my father, decided to sell out.  The new owners wanted to hire someone else to run it so my dad retired after 33 years.  They really should have let my dad stay because he was truly a legend in town and my local center went downhill after that.  I quit bowling for several years because it was just too hard to be there watching the place I loved so much be destroyed by someone who had no idea what they were doing.  I told my girlfriends, when the bowling alley sells and “they” are no longer involved, call me and I’ll come back.

Eventually it did sell, I got the call and I returned.  The local lanes changed hands many more times and the equipment was constantly breaking, the owner was not local and he kept hiring people to run the place that AGAIN, didn’t know what they were doing.  Our little Monday night league got down to 5 teams and I had had enough.  I hung it up about 5 years ago and haven’t looked back, until…..

Rumours have been swirling around town that a new bowling alley is going to be built.  Dare I dream, dare I hope.  What is this excitement in me?  Why do I feel this way?  What is going on?  Could it be that I could once again participate in something that at one time meant so much to me?  All these years I really didn’t care if I ever bowled again.  There was just no joy, no spark, no nothing.  It was something that was so tightly woven into the very fabric of my being and something that is my constant reminder of my dad, who passed away this past August.  In some way, I think my excitement about the possibility of bowling again will make me feel close to him again, will lessen the hurt and will keep him always on my mind and in my heart.  He would be so excited to know that we might get a new bowling alley, and he would be very proud of me for trying again.

So let’s get after it and get this thing built!